1. Field of the Invention
The present invention is directed to the field of data communications in a wireless network.
More particularly, the present invention relates to a system and method for managing information distribution to mobile stations in a wireless network.
2. Description of the Related Art
Emerging wireless data networks, such as the General Packet Radio Service (GPRS) network, may utilize the Internet Protocol (IP) for routing data to mobile stations. The most popular IP standard, IP version 4 (IPv4), has limited addressing capability and thus utilizes a dynamic addressing scheme. In the dynamic addressing scheme, a pool of available network addresses is dynamically assigned to a much greater pool of mobile stations depending on which mobile stations are accessing the network. Additional network resources, such as a Packet Data Protocol (PDP) context in the GPRS network, are allocated to mobile stations when the mobile stations are accessing the network.
An emerging IP standard, IP version 6 (IPv6), provides substantially permanent IP addresses due to a much larger address space, and thus the dynamic addressing scheme used in IPv4 is unnecessary. In an IPv6 network, however, additional network resources, such as the PDP context in the GPRS network, are still dynamically allocated to mobile stations when the mobile stations are accessing the network.